Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

Hi, it's Adalya with my second review from this years Man Booker Prize shortlist. This week I'm looking at Deborah Levy's Hot Milk. Hot Milk follows Sofia and her mother Rose as they travel from England to clinic of questionable merit in Spain, seeking answers to Rose's litany of mysterious ailments. Set in the searing heat of Southern Spain, Sofia undergoes a twisted iteration of the classic beach sexual awakening narrative while Rose undergoes Dr Gomez's treatment. As the reliability of the mother who so shapes Sofia's life and identity becomes shaky, the importance of her relationship to her father and his Greek heritage becomes a new fixation. Levy's writing is lucid and evocative. Images recur, morph and intermingle in unexpected ways. Her exploration of what it means to form an identity around illness and what it means to form an identity in inverse to somebody else is arresting and important. We are drawn immediately into Sofia's inner world, a stilted filter on reality. Even the dialogue felt unnatura